IMHO:
- primary color vs. all colors? Colors in general should be customizable per site - just a little data, no code .
- background images? Absolutely! Just a pointer to an image. We set guidelines and sites come up with their own images. DIY had some complaints (myself included) when SE “refreshed” the images and didn’t do a good job (to put it nicely).
- custom css? Limited. Colors are part of this, and we could allow some other changes to, for example, let sites have a different look to the buttons. Will need to be documented well as to what a site can change and how they can change it.
- custom js? No. That has too much potential for problems. Not “never”, but I would hold off on that for MVP. We can always revisit later, but I think most such features should be implemented system-wide with an option for sites to turn on/off. In other words, if a site needs that special new JS-driven capability, add it to the core and turn it off for the sites that don’t want it.
- enabling/disabling features from a common set? Yes
In addition, I would add:
- Customize “Tour”, “Help”, “FAQ”, etc. For example, DIY has a lot of images (and also a lot of non-technical users), so clearer instructions on adding images would be very helpful, but other sites may not need that.
- Assuming we use some form of voting → reputation → privileges, allow sites to make adjustments, particularly to the reputation → privileges part. (Arguably, the points per Q vote and A vote (which should be different values
) should be the same across all sites, but the points to be able to edit without review or whatever can vary.)